Episode 1 A Very Welsh Undertaking

It's the last thing we want to think about - our funeral -

but we all have very different thoughts about the way we want to go.

When the sun sets on the ocean blue,

remember me as I will always remember you.

God bless, Mum.

For some people, though, death is very much their way of life...

..and they love their work.

We care for the dead, but we're there to help the families

and I can't imagine a more rewarding job.

Welcome to a world that most of us will never see.

We are opening the doors on a very Welsh undertaking.

Every week in Wales, there are over 500 funerals

and today, Gareth Jenkins of Baglan Funeral Home near Port Talbot

is in the very early stages of organising just one of them.

We're arranging... Oh, I've spelt that wrong.

We're arranging...

Actually, the village of Glyncorrwg

has been very unfortunate there the last fortnight.

For such a small village,

they've had four people that have passed away there.

It's a close community and they never want to put it in the paper

because there's no need, really.

The third generation of a family of funeral directors,

Gareth is originally from the small village of Cymmer

and still serves his old patch.

Much has changed in the Welsh funeral business

but other things remain very traditional.

When people hear there are funerals,

they automatically go to certain places.

In the Ebbw Valleys, normally the shops and clubs,

and then, I've done a few funerals from over the other valley

in the Ogmore Vale Valley.

It's their sort of tradition there that there's certain

lampposts that they put the funeral notices on.

Sometimes, people want a private funeral

and they don't put a notice up at all.

People are phoning me up, "Where's the notice?"

That's where we're going now. I've got to collect some clothes as well.

A lady passed away in hospital and I asked the family,

and they'd like their mother to be dressed.

-Hello.

-Hello, come on in.

-Thanks.

And the family of the late Margaret Davies

are ready to check the order of service.

Sometimes, there might be a slight error on the notice,

but if the family have read it before they put them out,

I feel better about that.

-Right, so we've got the clothes there, is it?

-Yeah.

The family have given me the clothes.

They are ready to dress her.

When they come down to say their final goodbyes,

she'll be looking glamorous in her clothes

and it's clothes they're familiar with.

I think she'll look really nice then.

-That's lovely. And her glasses on?

-Glasses.

-And her teeth.

-Remember the teeth.

-OK.

That's lovely.

Clothes collected, order of service checked,

it's now time to distribute the funeral notices.

We generally put one in the post office.

The cafe is closed.

The shops are closing.

There are getting less places we can actually put them.

BUZZER RINGS

-Hello, there.

-Hello.

I was just wondering, a family have asked

if you would mind putting funeral notices in.

-Oh, no, we don't mind.

-OK.

This is the shop.

-Hello. All right?

-No, I'm not.

-What's wrong?

-You see, yesterday...

I'd put make-up on in the morning.

-I've got no make-up and I haven't done my hair today.

-Yeah.

-And I've dressed like a skunk.

-GARETH LAUGHS

This is one of the places.

They always look in the window here,

so we've got to put notices in here as well.

Gareth has arranged thousands of funerals

and can average up to ten a week.

We've been established as a funeral company since 1948.

24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year,

you have to be on call.

Police call us, doctors call us, family call us

and you just have to be there to provide the service.

Through here is the mortuary.

People always ask me, "What's the worst thing?

"How can you deal, you know, with dead bodies?"

That's probably the easiest and the thing that you tend to get used to.

The hardest definitely is dealing with a family

who's just lost somebody.

When I first started, it was very traditional -

a church, maybe, or chapel - whereas now it's more a celebration of life.

40 miles down the M4 is Newport-based Tovey Bros Funeral Directors -

another family firm that have brought tradition into the 21st century.

I'm James Tovey from Tovey Bros in Newport.

My great, great, great grandfather was working alongside an existing funeral director in Newport

who became ill and his wife asked my great, great, great grandfather to help out.

And eventually, he took over the business

and it's amazing that something accidental like that

has forged the lives of so many of us since.

Follow me through to the main reception room here.

You can see around the walls, there are pictures of all my ancestors.

Not many people have their great-great-great grandfather

looking down on them when they come to work every day.

And then obviously, the rest, my great-great grandfather

and it has gone down from father to son for six generations,

now, right down to me at the end, I'm afraid, at the moment anyway.

Tovey is the family name

and originally we were established in Dock Street in Newport.

We had to leave there in the 1950s and early '60s,

when they developed the Kingsway Centre.

And about ten years ago, I discovered this old window

in one of our storage sheds and it was from the original premises.

We're very lucky to have this service chapel,

which was built on about 20 years ago,

when I decided to join the business.

The building is a Grade II listed building,

but we were able to sympathetically add on this service chapel.

We are lucky to have everything on one site here.

Our garages are here as well

so everything is nicely and neatly contained.

We've just got a funeral leaving here now, actually.

One of our hearses is going out to a funeral with a lot of flowers today,

which is quite unusual, but it looks impressive,

and obviously what the family wanted.

All our vehicles are Jaguars. I'm very keen to have the best fleet

we can possibly have.

My thinking on everything to do with funerals is that I try and give

families what I would want for own my funeral, or my own family's

funeral, and so I think it is important to have nice

vehicles, not only for the deceased to be in

but also for families to travel in comfort and style.

That is pretty central there, that is good.

But not all of James' customers want to travel in luxury.

Some are more than content with an altogether more agricultural

form of transport.

So this afternoon, we have a funeral of a gentleman

and he was very keen on tractors.

He had quite a large tractor collection,

so we are using one of his tractor and a trailer

to convey him to the church, going past some of the land that he owned.

And also with some of the vintage tractors from fellow members

of the tractor club that he was part of.

I hope he would be very pleased if he were looking down on us.

And we went past Mr Richards' old farmland

and the sun came out for us. It had been raining all morning, but it was

beautiful, the sun shone, so that went really well.

The family were very happy.

It took a little bit longer than we anticipated,

but everything is fine now. We are at the church.

The church is absolutely packed,

so I can't even get there myself really.

I've let people get in to the back of the church

and they are filling the aisle.

There is a small step as you come into the porch, OK?

It is always a little bit stressful if you are watching the clock

and just to check everything is OK,

but at least with the service being the church and the churchyard,

we don't need to worry about getting to a crematorium or anything like

that, so it is fine now. We are here now and everything will be fine.

I think the fact that so many people have turned up in their tractors

for the procession and also turned up in numbers to attend

in the church, and really fill the church out just shows how popular

Mr Richards was. And it is unusual to have a funeral of this

size for somebody who is later on in life, shall we say,

got to a great age,

so it is lovely to see all these people here for him.

Gareth Jenkins' funeral home is in a residential area

on the outskirts of Port Talbot

and his neighbours have never had any problem with his family's work.

Now he has got a plan to turn his own back garden

into a place of remembrance for his clients,

removing an old overgrown hedge to build a new memorial garden.

We'd noticed they'd just turn to the window

and they are looking out, so we thought we would open up

the garden and maybe have an Italian fountain, something calming.

Obviously, because of the noise,

this can't take place during office hours. So, unfortunately,

I have to pay double time on a Sunday to get this done.

So that come tomorrow morning, it will be more the quiet work

of just planting and so forth,

but we will get the noisy stuff over now.

Timber!

My poor lawn!

All those years of cultivating this lawn and...

Never mind, next spring it will be right...

I hope.

And by the following spring,

the Baglan memorial garden is certainly taking shape

and Gareth is shopping for some new ornaments.

We're having some sort of... They're like Roman urns

and we are going to have a fountain as well, and then they are going

to be mood lit-mood lit. I will say that again. Mood lit in the evening,

so I am dealing with this company that seem to have everything I want.

I'm going to ask the others but it is my choice in the end.

Now, I don't think that would be appropriate. Is that...?

Oh, that is Pan, yeah, I thought it was the devil then for a minute.

The people who conduct funeral services in Wales are changing.

More families are choosing non-religious ceremonies,

often led by funeral celebrants like Helen Williams.

She took a rather unusual road to her calling.

I was a power lifter. I was actually world champion

and I held the world squat record for quite a long time.

I squatted 200 kilos - that is a lot of weight.

I suppose, in some ways, the powerlifting has prepared me

for this in a strange way.

I mean, you are carrying literally the weight of the weights

on your back there, but you're carrying the weight

of responsibility and you've got to get it right.

Many people worry that they come out of a funeral saying,

"Well, that could've been anybody's funeral. That...

"You know, I didn't really learn anything about the person.

"I didn't feel as though I was reflecting on the person."

And, of course, that is core to my ceremony, getting to know the family

and the person, the departed.

-Hello, Ellie.

-Yes.

-Hi, I'm Helen.

-How do you do?

-Thank you.

-Come in.

-Thank you very much.

I come away feeling as though I knew the person

and then writing this tribute to them,

and then I will write the ceremony around that tribute,

so every part of that ceremony is related to that person.

Today, Helen has come to arrange a tribute with Ellie,

who recently lost her husband James,

known by most people as Jimmy the Bees.

Ellie, thank you very much for inviting me

to do this ceremony for you. It must be a really tough time for you.

Do you refer to him as James or Jimmy?

You can just go back and forth between James and Jimmy.

It helps people to talk about their departed, their loved ones.

I am absolutely positive it helps cos that is all you want to do.

You want to have someone who will sit and listen.

I didn't think anybody could be so ill as he was.

It is emotionally draining but it is so rewarding in the long-term.

Wow. You have had a really, really, really tough few months.

I suppose my job in this,

if possible, is try and do the best for you and with you,

so together we will try and create a ceremony and it will be...

-Are you OK?

-Thank you, Helen.

It will be just around James, and around Jimmy, and it will be

trying to bring to mind what was important about him for you.

She has good ideas of what she wants to do.

I think it's going to make a really beautiful funeral, to be honest.

Conducting the funeral of Jimmy the Bees will be Hefin Williams,

a young funeral director from the Gwendraeth Valley.

But today, he has a more traditional funeral to arrange.

However, a childhood fear may get in the way.

We've got a horse and carriage, that was the gentleman's wishes.

He was a JCB driver. There are a lot of flowers.

Nice to see the old traditional funeral.

I am not a big lover of animals at all, to be honest with you,

but I did have two horses when I was a little boy.

But cos I didn't like them so much, my parents had to get rid of them.

We all know what is happening in February, it is Valentine's,

and there are red roses. The casket is there, full of red roses,

so unfortunately it is double the price for the flowers.

I never wear my hat.

-Pull it down towards you, right?

-HE LAUGHS

It is a very frosty and cold morning,

so it's going to be a bit cold on top of the carriage.

Across Wales, the traditional horse-drawn hearse is again

becoming more popular.

Although more expensive than the standard hearse,

families are choosing style and splendour over cost.

In Gareth Jenkins' funeral home in Baglan,

preparations are underway to get Margaret Davies ready

for her family to visit her for the very last time.

Christine Jenkins, Gareth's wife,

has become an expert in making the deceased look their very best.

The family have given me a watch

and have spoken to Christine about where they want everything.

It's just small things but it means a lot to them

when they come to see them.

I usually prefer them, if they wish,

for them to be wearing their own clothes,

so they look like their old selves.

So now I leave it to my wife Christine just to dress her.

We think it's nice that ladies dress ladies

and gents dress gents, and then I shall come back afterwards,

just to help her finish off things, with shoes and things.

This is Craig Perfect, my partner.

My partner, I may add, in the funeral home, not in life.

And he is looking a bit flustered because he is dashing out

for his first of three this morning, I believe,

so I've got to leave him go.

-I'll see you later.

-Ta-ta, bye-bye.

-Ta-ta.

You do have to relax and you do... That is why you do have to,

it is essential to have a good sense of humour as well.

And we are like a support team for each other.

We get stressed out as well, but we try not to show it to anybody else

because what we are going through is nothing compared to what

the family are going through, and that's what we've got to remember.

It is so important that the last memory they have of somebody

is a pleasant one

and any little thing that we can do to make that time special...

..we have to do.

We usually ask them,

"Would you prefer to see them with their glasses?" Cos that is the way

they are used to seeing them, so very often, we often put glasses on.

If it is a cremation, mind,

we do have to remove them prior to going to the crematorium.

Everything is ready now with the coffin in.

Then we will phone the family up and tell them

that their mother is available for viewing, so I'm sure

they will be pleased because they are pretty anxious to see her.

I advised them not to go to the hospital to see them

and when they come to see her now

in the coffin, in a nice environment,

I'm sure it will be a lot nicer than the hospital.

My mother and father,

they were both seriously ill before they passed away.

And I said my goodbyes to her and, although my mother

and father were resting here,

I didn't feel the need to see them.

Personally, I said my goodbyes then.

But, like I said, it is a totally individual thing to think about.

-Hello.

-All right?

-OK?

It is always worrying moment

when the family come here to see her dressed.

If you go down to the lounge.

You are wondering, "Is she going to look like they expected?"

I'm going to take you in to see your mother now

and then there is a bell here, and you take as long as you like

and then you give me a ring if there's anything you need. OK?

There is always that emotional first time they see her dressed

because they might not have seen her now since she passed away.

WOMAN SOBS

Just ring the bell if you need me.

And we'll ask them afterwards if they want a tea or coffee

cos we're very conscious that they're so upset in there

that they jump in the car, they're not thinking

and we're very aware that they might just drive out there, not actually

concentrating as well, so we just make sure everything is all right.

OK?

'On the day of the funeral, if somebody has been here

'and they've seen their loved ones in the coffin,

'on the day of the funeral, that certainly helps.'

-Just give me a ring if there's anything before Tuesday. OK?

-Lovely.

-There you are.

-Thank you.

-I'll just come out with you now.

-OK.

Traditions are very important in the funeral business,

even down to an end-of-week ritual.

We just tend to, on a Friday, enjoy a little cake together.

We take it in turns to buy them, of course.

As you can see, I don't eat them.

I do!

In the Gwendraeth Valley, it's the day of Jimmy the Bees' funeral.

We've got the funeral today of James the Bee,

as they call him,

so the family's given me a list of stuff they want to put in there

with James. So...as you can see, there's a little box here.

He actually died a day before his birthday,

so the family and friends have given some birthday cards, two RAF ties

and, because he was a beekeeper,

there's a little plastic pot of honey

and a queen bee.

This is the first time, actually,

I've put a queen bee and a pot of honey in, so it's a nice touch

because he was a beekeeper, so a very nice touch from the family.

With a burial, you can put anything in, but with a cremation,

it's more difficult what we can put in.

Also I've got a list of things to put on top of the coffin,

so the family friend has done a bee

and there's a beekeeper's smoker.

Never seen one in my life, so when we arrive

at the crematorium, we'll have to place that on top of the coffin.

I've never done a funeral before with a celebrant,

so it'll be the first time for me.

So I know she's been very helpful with the family

and doing it very personal, as the family want.

'What Ellie's looking for in this funeral, I'm sure,

'she wants the emotion.

'Yeah, she wants to celebrate his life, but it's his funeral.

'She wants to have permission to weep if she needs to weep.

'She wants to feel close to the people with her and she wants it,

'I think, to be a vehicle through which everyone can be together

'and be strong together, and really focus on and remember James.'

Ellie has asked me to thank you for coming here today to honour

the life of James Jimmy the Bees Horne.

'I'm not religious myself, I was brought up Catholic,

'but I'm very much lapsed from that,

'but obviously it influences how I think and I wouldn't try

'and put any of my thoughts out to any of the families I deal with.

'I would simply absorb what they believe and what they reflect,

'and use that in the ceremony.'

It's now time to say a final goodbye to James Joseph Horne.

# I have a dream

# A song to sing

# To help me cope

# With anything... #

I thought Helen was excellent and the family was very happy

with the service, so it was very respectful and the way

they wanted it, so personal as they wanted it.

# ..future even if you fail... #

In Baglan, Margaret Davies has been taken by Gareth

to be buried in Cymmer Cemetery.

And for all funeral directors, time is of the essence.

My trusty grandfather's watch. It just looks better, doesn't it?

Fortunately, the weather is very nice this morning.

When I say nice, it's very cold but we've had no snow,

we've had no frost.

It's about 14 miles up the valley,

so we've got to allow a little bit for traffic.

It's not a particularly busy road, so we should be fine.

We usually allow about ten minutes leeway each way

and then we can either speed up or slow down.

In a cemetery, it's not so rushed.

It doesn't matter if we go over five, ten minutes.

It doesn't matter if we're early five or ten minutes.

It's not so crucial with the timing this morning.

Years ago, it was never a problem singing hymns,

but not so many people go to chapel now

and it was very traditional for us to sing hymns. And you could

always rely on all the congregation singing, but now it's changed.

# On a hill far away... #

Sometimes I'm there and I've got to sing on my own.

I don't mind doing that as long as it's in my key.

# ..emblem of suffering... #

I generally, to be honest, much to the annoyance of the hearse driver,

I'll have a little warm-up in the car on the way.

# And exchange it some day

# For a crown. #

'Because everyone there personally knows me,

'the older ones have known me since I was a child.

'The younger ones, you know, I've grown up with, they are perhaps

'a little bit more critical because they know me well enough.

'If something was to go a little bit awry, say,

'they will come up and tell me.'

-Resurrection to eternal life through Christ our Lord. Amen.

-Amen.

Everything went well.

I did pitch the hymn wrong, so I couldn't reach the high notes.

There were some people singing next to me too high

and I couldn't get there but, no, the funeral went very well.

The problem is now that, because of the snow

and the ice that we had previously, the cars are covered in salt

cos they've been salting the roads and they're completely white.

I can't possibly go to my next funeral now with the cars

looking like that, so it's rushing down the valley now,

and a quick wash and polish.

After six months of preparation, it's a special and very personal day

for Gareth as his memorial garden is about to be officially opened.

May this place be a comfort to the living

and a prayerful sign of their hope for an end in life.

So I now declare this garden open.

Hooray!

'Although my grandmother has passed away a while now, she didn't want

'to get buried and I didn't know really what to do with the ashes.

'Whereas I advise people that they must make a decision

'fairly soon, I haven't done so myself

'and my sister didn't know exactly what to do, or my wife Christine,

'but we thought since we built this memorial garden, it would be fitting

'that my grandmother rests here,

'so it's nice today that we're doing it.'

I think we're all, as a family, greatly relieved that she is resting

somewhere nice, and I'd like to thank the vicar

and all her staff for being a part of today.

Thanks very much.

Hooray!

To Nellie.

THEY TOAST